Robert Love, kernel hacker well known for his preemptive patch, has now joined the ranks of Ximian. In a nutshell, he told us that he is going to be working on kernel and system-level projects to improve the Linux desktop experience. Better hardware management/integration/naming/hotplugging, a kernel event system, and desktop/laptop performance tuning are immediate goals. Robert recently released a book, “Linux Kernel Development” which we reviewed.
Kernel Hacker Robert Love Joins Ximian
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Sweet!
Good luck at the new place, Robert!
Yep. Linux is getting to where it needs to be on the server. I recall an article a while back that performed benchmarks on a bunch of Unix, Linux, and Windows servers, and it was found that Linux scales best. While it’s fantastic to see that continuing, I’m thrilled to see that development is finally shifting in a direction that’s pertinent to me as a desktop user.
With GNU/Linux/OSS continuing to ease into various parts of the corporate world, it will be interesting to observe the reaction of the communities’ more vocal and social voices.
As corporations warm to GNU/Linux/OSS and are more willing to dedicate resources and cash to development and maintenance, how will various parties respond?
Talents such as Robert deserve to get paid and paid well for what they do. Hopefully over time, other such contributors will find more luck with corporate sponsorship or better yet, paid positions which help both the business bottom line and the community.
But over time, exactly how close can corporate goals and the community-at-large cozy up before there’s some friction?
Moral of the Day: Novell-SuSE-Ximian makes another good move. Other co’s continue to take notes.
Including Microsoft, with there new development teams for the Core OS and etc…
It’s a good thing for people to get paid to work on the kernel or the desktop
“I recall an article a while back that performed benchmarks on a bunch of Unix, Linux, and Windows servers, and it was found that Linux scales best.”
Ever heard of the phrase “Lies Dam Lies and Benchmarks”, google it sometime. Benchmarks many times are a self fulling prophecy and while Linux may have won one test that doesn’t mean it wins them all.
I’m as big a Linux booster as you’ll find, but I just wanted point that out because elsewhere on the Net outside of a minor news article like this, saying what you said is likely to get you flamed to no end.
What would be considered kernel and system-level projects? I thought Ximian was desktop oriented, what do they do with the kernel and the underlying(sp) system?
” What would be considered kernel and system-level projects? I thought Ximian was desktop oriented, what do they do with the kernel and the underlying(sp) system? ”
Novell is planning serious “technology control/capacity”.
You need people that understand deeply the Kernel, the overall System, the Desktop, the toolkits, the main applications like browser, office(OOO, KOffice…), e-mail, colab., severs, devel… and so on.
They need a good team, in many areas, participating seriously in the community.’
It makes business sense if their latests moves like acquiring Ximian and SuSE are serious decisions.
If it really works we will see in the future, but hey are playing a nice game 😉
Alex.
please look at
http://freedesktop.org/~keithp/screenshots/
http://www.directfb.org/screenshots/index.xml
—
😉
DirectFB is NOT a good desktop solution. Throwing away network transparency because you don’t use it is absolutely idiotic.
Keith’s solution is a much better bet, but I’m not convinced people are really going to move to it. There’s a lot of work in the drivers area left to be done, not to mention memory optimization.
-Erwos